On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 10:29:02AM +0100, Mikko Ojutkangas wrote:
> Hej!
>
>
> > > 2011/12/13 Jeremiah Foster <jeremiah_at_jeremiahfoster.com>:
> [...]
> > > > Absolutely not. Eben Moglen would strongly disagree and he crafted
> > > > large parts of the GPL v3, he also left the FSF, perhaps in a
> > > > disagreement over its philosophy, and FSF is the poorer for it.
> > > > Moglen is pro-business, as are many who believe in the Free Software
> > > > movement.
>
> Moglen is pro business?
Absolutely. At least he is on record saying so publicly. I've heard he's done
a bit of work for IBM from time to time too.
(http://old.law.columbia.edu/resume.html)
> I wouldn't have guessed. More than pro business, I'd say he's pro people, though, for sure.
>
> You may well be right and maybe I've heard what I want to hear when I've listened to Moglen. I should go back and see if I can spot the pro-businessyness.
Take a look at the talk he gave at DebConf10 in NYC. Both Per Andersson and I were there. :-)
> Can you blame me for being confused, though? The guy wrote "The dotCommunist Manifesto" http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/dcm.html :
I'd argue perhaps that the title is less a description of the contents and more
of an attention grabber.
> "A Spectre is haunting multinational capitalism--the spectre of free information. All the powers of ``globalism'' have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcize this spectre: Microsoft and Disney, the World Trade Organization, the United States Congress and the European Commission.
But this statement, and the whole manifesto, is not inconsistent with Capitalism.
Capitalism wants transparency and the powers of ''globalism, MSFT, DIS, US Congrees'' are not always helpful in creating that transparency. Markets need to have a way to set prices and calculate risk but corporations and their benefactors work hard to obscure transparency because there is a lot of money at stake. One way they do this is by extending the franchise of rights holders beyond its mandate - this is what is wrong with current copyright legislation. We see this in the desire to extend patents to software as well.
This is why the manifesto is pro-capitalism - it wants freedoms that will create transparency in marketplace of ideas. The coupling of markets and democracy are a potent tool for the development of egalitarian societies. And isn't that what we want? A fair, equal, open, free society? Whether that is called 'capitalism' or 'communism' I care not, but so far, the practical mechanisms of the former seem more effective than the later.
> Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have not been decried as pirates, anarchists, communists? Have we not seen that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power, whose talk of ``intellectual property'' was nothing more than an attempt to retain unjustifiable privileges in a society irrevocably changing? But it is acknowledged by all the Powers of Globalism that the movement for freedom is itself a Power, and it is high time that we should publish our views in the face of the whole world, to meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Free Information with a Manifesto of our own. "
>
> ...of which the above is how far I've read it, so I should definitely dive in more deeply before making any absolute statements.
I won't contradict your position however I don't think the manifesto contradicts mine.
Regards,
Jeremiah
> [...]
> > Sedan är det nog i betraktarens öga om effekten är liberal eller
> > kollektivistisk.
> >
> > /Anders W
>
> Ja. FOSS kan ses som en essentiell byggsten i skilda utopier. Folk från olika ideologiska kanter kan sammarbeta i praktiken med samma kod - "Open source"-folket och "Free software"-folket och anarko-socialisten och IBM och alla däremellan. För en är det revolution, för en annan "makes business-sense", för en tredje är det bara teknologiskt pragmatiskt.
>
> /Mikko
>
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Received on 2011-12-19